Mr M'Lucre, going to London, as I have intimated in the foregoing
chapter, remained there, absent from us altogether about the space of six
weeks; and when he came home, he was plainly an altered man, being
sometimes very jocose, and at other times looking about him as if he had
been haunted by some ill thing. Moreover, Mrs Spell, that had the post-
office from the decease of her husband, Deacon Spell, told among her
kimmers, that surely the bailie had a great correspondence with the king
and government, for that scarce a week passed without a letter from him
to our member, or a letter from the member to him. This bred no small
consideration among us; and I was somehow a thought uneasy thereat, not
knowing what the bailie, now that he was out of the guildry, might be
saying anent the use and wont that had been practised therein, and never
more than in his own time. At length, the babe was born.
One evening, as I was sitting at home, after closing the shop for the
night, and conversing concerning the augmentation of our worldly affairs
with Mrs Pawkie and the bairns--it was a damp raw night; I mind it just
as well as if it had been only yestreen--who should make his appearance
at the room door but the bailie himself, and a blithe face he had?
"It's a' settled now," cried he, as he entered with a triumphant voice;
"the siller's my ain, and I can keep it in spite of them; I don't value
them now a cutty-spoon; no, not a doit; no the worth of that; nor a'
their sprose about Newgate and the pillory;"--and he snapped his fingers
with an aspect of great courage.
"Hooly, hooly, bailie," said I; "what's a' this for?" and then he
replied, taking his seat beside me at the fireside--"The plea with the
custom-house folk at London is settled, or rather, there canna be a plea
at a', so firm and true is the laws of England on my side, and the
liberty of the subject."
All this was Greek and Hebrew to me; but it was plain that the bailie, in
his jaunt, had been guilty of some notour thing, wherein the custom-house
was concerned, and that he thought all the world was acquaint with the
same. However, no to balk him in any communication he might be disposed
to make me, I said:--
"What ye say, bailie, is great news, and I wish you meikle joy, for I
have had my fears about your situation for some time; but now that the
business is brought to such a happy end, I would like to hear all the
true particulars of the case; and that your tale and tidings sha'na lack
slackening, I'll get in the toddy bowl and the gardevin; and with that, I
winket to the mistress to take the bairns to their bed, and bade Jenny
Hachle, that was then our fee'd servant lass, to gar the kettle boil.
Poor Jenny has long since fallen into a great decay of circumstances, for
she was not overly snod and cleanly in her service; and so, in time, wore
out the endurance of all the houses and families that fee'd her, till
nobody would take her; by which she was in a manner cast on Mrs Pawkie's
hands; who, on account of her kindliness towards the bairns in their
childhood, has given her a howf among us. But, to go on with what I was
rehearsing; the toddy being ordered, and all things on the table, the
bailie, when we were quiet by ourselves, began to say--
"Ye ken weel, Mr Pawkie, what I did at the 'lection for the member and
how angry ye were yoursel about it, and a' that. But ye were greatly
mista'en in thinking that I got ony effectual fee at the time, over and
above the honest price of my potatoes; which ye were as free to bid for,
had ye liket, as either o' the candidates. I'll no deny, however, that
the nabob, before he left the town, made some small presents to my wife
and dochter; but that was no fault o' mine. Howsever, when a' was o'er,
and I could discern that ye were mindet to keep the guildry, I thought,
after the wreck o' my provision concern, I might throw mair bread on the
water and not find it, than by a bit jaunt to London to see how my
honourable friend, the nabob, was coming on in his place in parliament,
as I saw none of his speeches in the newspaper.
"Well, ye see, Mr Pawkie, I gae'd up to London in a trader from Leith;
and by the use of a gude Scotch tongue, the whilk was the main substance
o' a' the bairns' part o' gear that I inherited from my parents, I found
out the nabob's dwelling, in the west end o' the town of London; and
finding out the nabob's dwelling, I went and rappit at the door, which a
bardy flunkie opened, and speer't what I want it, as if I was a thing no
fit to be lifted off a midden with a pair of iron tongs. Like master,
like man, thought I to myself; and thereupon, taking heart no to be put
out, I replied to the whipper-snapper--'I'm Bailie M'Lucre o' Gudetown,
and maun hae a word wi' his honour.'
"The cur lowered his birsses at this, and replied, in a mair ceeveleezed
style of language, 'Master is not at home.' But I kent what not at home
means in the morning at a gentleman's door in London; so I said, 'Very
weel, as I hae had a long walk, I'll e'en rest myself and wait till he
come;' and with that, I plumpit down on one of the mahogany chairs in the
trance. The lad, seeing that I was na to be jookit, upon this answered
me, by saying, he would go and enquire if his master would be at home to
me; and the short and the long o't was, that I got at last an audience o'
my honourable friend.
"'Well, bailie,' said he, 'I'm glad to see you in London,' and a hantle
o' ither courtly glammer that's no worth a repetition; and, from less to
mair, we proceeded to sift into the matter and end of my coming to ask
the help o' his hand to get me a post in the government. But I soon saw,
that wi a' the phraseology that lay at his tongue end during the
election, about his power and will to serve us, his ain turn ser't, he
cared so little for me. Howsever after tarrying some time, and going to
him every day, at long and last he got me a tide-waiter's place at the
custom-house; a poor hungry situation, no worth the grassum at a new tack
of the warst land in the town's aught. But minnows are better than nae
fish, and a tide-waiter's place was a step towards a better, if I could
have waited. Luckily, however, for me, a flock of fleets and ships frae
the East and West Indies came in a' thegither; and there was sic a stress
for tide-waiters, that before I was sworn in and tested, I was sent down
to a grand ship in the Malabar trade frae China, loaded with tea and
other rich commodities; the captain whereof, a discreet man, took me down
to the cabin, and gave me a dram of wine, and, when we were by oursels,
he said to me--
"'Mr M'Lucre, what will you take to shut your eyes for an hour?'
"'I'll no take a hundred pounds,' was my answer.
"'I'll make it guineas,' quoth he.
"Surely, thought I, my eyne maun be worth pearls and diamonds to the East
India Company; so I answered and said--
"'Captain, no to argol-bargol about the matter,' (for a' the time, I
thought upon how I had not been sworn in;)--'what will ye gie me, if I
take away my eyne out of the vessel?'
"'A thousand pounds,' cried he.
"'A bargain be't,' said I. I think, however, had I stood out I might hae
got mair. But it doesna rain thousands of pounds every day; so, to make
a long tale short, I got a note of hand on the Bank of England for the
sum, and, packing up my ends and my awls, left the ship.
"It was my intent to have come immediately home to Scotland; but the same
afternoon, I was summoned by the Board at the Custom-house for deserting
my post; and the moment I went before them, they opened upon me like my
lord's pack of hounds, and said they would send me to Newgate. 'Cry a'
at ance,' quoth I; 'but I'll no gang.' I then told them how I was na
sworn, and under no obligation to serve or obey them mair than pleasured
mysel'; which set them a' again a barking worse than before; whereupon,
seeing no likelihood of an end to their stramash, I turned mysel' round,
and, taking the door on my back, left them, and the same night came off
on the Fly to Edinburgh. Since syne they have been trying every grip and
wile o' the law to punish me as they threatened; but the laws of England
are a great protection to the people against arbitrary power; and the
letter that I have got to-day frae the nabob, tells me that the
commissioners hae abandoned the plea."
Such was the account and narration that the bailie gave to me of the
particulars o' his journey to London; and when he was done, I could not
but make a moral reflection or two, on the policy of gentlemen putting
themselves on the leet to be members of Parliament; it being a clear and
plain thing, that as they are sent up to London for the benefit of the
people by whom they are chosen, the people should always take care to get
some of that benefit in hand paid down, otherwise they run a great risk
of seeing their representatives neglecting their special interests, and
treating them as entitled to no particular consideration.